My Anger Hurts Me

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

—Ephesians 4:31

My friend Sarah asked me how I was doing one night. “Well,” I said, “it’s been pretty hard lately with my friend at whom I am very angry.”

“Oh,” she said. “When did you talk to her?” I rolled my eyes and puffed out my breath like I was a seventh grade girl. I didn’t talk to her. Was she crazy? “I, um, I actually didn’t talk with her at all. I mean, it’s been hard . . . in my head.”

Gently, kindly, she paused, waiting for me to realize what I just said. I had been spending hours in imaginary conversations, tying myself up in knots, harboring secret fantasies of this person falling down in public, planning out elaborate comebacks I should have said months ago.

When I told Sarah that things had been hard in my head, I realized that I’m the only one suffering right now. My anger doesn’t hurt the person at whom I am very angry, but it hurts me. My friend is doing great, I think, but I stagger around in a fog of anger and clenched jaws and fists, waiting for a showdown that will never come and an apology that will never be offered.